So What Has The Most Honest And Ethical Congress In History Been Up To Lately?

We pledge to make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history. -Nancy Pelosi Nov. 14, 2006.

Well let’s see here…something happened last Thursday, I believe.

The Republicans wanted to send the bill back to committee in order to add a amendment prohibiting benefits to illegal aliens. The most honest and ethical and open bunch were hellbent on stopping that.

From David Fredoso at The Corner:

Republicans were playing a game that the minority usually plays — you have your guys vote with the other side, then have them change at the last minute. This forces the majority to come up with votes quickly. Although on close issues they would rather spare their endangered members in swing districts and give them a free vote, the majority leadership then has to tell their endangered members to bite their tongues and vote the party line.

Two Democrats changed their votes to ensure that the measure would fail, but then three Republicans did the same. The vote total was 215-213 in favor of the Republican motion to recommit. At that moment, Rep. Mike McNulty ( D-N.Y.), who was in the Speaker’s chair, gavelled out the vote, thinking that it was a tie and the motion had failed. But he had miscounted — the motion had actually passed. The Democrats were only able to change this by cheating and changing more votes after the gavel.

That seems like….cheating, doesn’t it?

Let’s see, what else, what else?

Oh! I know! Earmarks. Nancy Pelosi said last year that she would be happy to do away with them. Has that happened?

`They’ve made some steps forward, but we’ve still got a long way to go before we get to real transparency and earmark reform and really reining in the excesses of the last decade,” says Steve Ellis, vice president of the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, which compiles databases of earmarks. -Bloomberg

And yet:

The new rules haven’t stopped lawmakers from funneling earmarks to specific companies, some of them political donors, as well as to public projects such as roads, schools and parks.

Some companies stand to gain from Pelosi’s earmarks. The California Democrat has won funding for six companies in a 2008 defense funding measure. One is a $4 million request to develop a “novel viral biowarfare agent” for *Prosetta Corp., based in her San Francisco district. Tom Higgins, the company’s chief executive officer, says he talked to the Speaker’s staff directly rather than hiring a lobbyist and hasn’t given money to her campaign. “We’re just a little company,” he says.

Another of Pelosi’s earmarks was $2.5 million to Bioquiddity, Inc., a San Francisco biotech company with nine employees, to continue developing drug-infusion pumps. Bioquiddity President Josh Kriesel, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state legislature in 2002, has donated $6,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since last September. The company received a total of $3.9 million in earmarks in the last two years. Kriesel declined to comment directly on the earmarks. -Bloomberg

Well, huh!

“It baffles me how people can complain bitterly about Halliburton and no-bid contracts and then lard up a bill with literally thousands of earmarks to companies when that’s all they are — no-bid contracts,” says Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, referring to criticism of the Bush administration’s sole-source contract with the Houston-based company during the Iraq war. Flake is noted for not requesting earmarks and publicizing those of his colleagues. -Bloomberg

Pelosi also nearly put well known ethicist William Jefferson on the Homeland Security committee.

She has since backed away from the appointment, due to the outcry.

And how about that 23 billion dollar pork slush fund and spending spree?

My personal favorite open and honest and ethical congressional moment?

Senator Harry Reid proclaiming that the Iraq war was lost before the surge was even fully in place. Here, at Nice Deb’s I believe that earned him The Biggest Douchenozzle in America award.

There’s more…much more at the Republican Study Committee Website.

Slightly, partisan? yeah.

But somebody has to chronicle what The most open and honest, and ethical congress in history is up to.

*Prosetta Corp emailed to say:

Due to an editing error, the reporting in the Bloomberg News Service story about Prosetta is misleading. The company is in no way whatsoever involved in creating biowarfare agents. To the contrary, Prosetta’s scientific research is focused on finding treatments for a wide range of viruses, including Hepatitis C and Influenza. The program reported in the news story is named “Identification and Treatment” of biowarfare agents, but was mischaracterized in the news story. The company has made important progress in its research, which commenced in response to a competitive Request for Proposals designed to address a serious threat to the health and safety of our citizens.

In other words the reporter at Bloomberg screwed up.